August 24, 2012

Morning, Noon & Night

Early morning views from my workspace of late, the front porch. I find it soothing, the way the misty morning fog filters the sunlight.

In the afternoon, testing out my new Nikon D3200. I have to say, the picture quality (24MP) is spectacular. Which might not be so apparent at this size and low resolution. Trust me. I am loving the manual focus mode on both the 40mm micro lens and the 18-55mm kit lens. Finally, I can focus precisely where I want. Otherwise, all these were taken in fully automatic mode. I haven't delved into the settings menu yet.

It's a bit disheartening, but no surprise, that the healthiest and most prolific plant in our garden is the "volunteer" squash plant growing out of the compost heap. It's disappointing that it is neither acorn nor pattypan squash as we suspected earlier, but merely some kind of decorative gourd. Now that we've been having occasional rain this monster plant is about 4 feet tall and spreads out over at least 20 feet.

The above shots of the blossoms were taken with the zoom lens. Even with this kit lens, the fine hairs on the flower petals are crystal clear. The following shots of the stages of the gourds used the micro (same as macro) lens. Love. For scale, the blossom attached to the bitty gourd is about the size of my thumb and the other gourds of various colors are close to the size of my fist.